WASHINGTON, DC: Former White House doctor Anthony Fauci has reportedly been accused of lying under oath about funding hazardous virus research in China, which is thought to be the root of the Covid-19 pandemic. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul recently wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland to request a probe into whether the 82-year-old Fauci committed perjury while testifying in front of a Senate committee in 2021.
A slew of freshly released emails, which dates back to February 1, 2020, revealed that Fauci did acknowledge that "scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan." While the emails clarified that Fauci was aware of the gain-of-function research taking place at the lab, he never admitted that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was funding it. However, Senator Paul disputed his assertions, claiming that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in June that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and Wuhan University had indeed received NIH funds.
Did the Wuhan lab receive NIH funding for research?
On July 13, The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic released the emails that Fauci apparently exchanged during a conference call about its possible cause, which he attended with Dr Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and other researchers. At that time, Fauci acknowledged in one email that experts had doubts about Covid being genetically modified, and that these worries were made worse by the fact that gain-of-function research was being conducted in Wuhan.
Notably, gain-of-function research involves genetically modifying a virus to make it more lethal or contagious in an effort to beat any potential natural mutations. In the committee chamber, Paul stated, that during a hearing in July, Fauci had said that the "NIH has never and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology." "And yet, gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Doctor Shi [Zhengli] and was funded by the NIH," Paul said while expressing his doubts. He went on to present a paper by WIV researchers titled "Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus."
Did Anthony Fauci faultly referred the research at WIV as 'gain-of-function experiments'?
In particular, the WIV's report discussed an ongoing initiative to create a "chimeric" coronavirus, which denotes that it has undergone human intervention, otherwise known as a "gain-of-function" experiment. Paul pointed out that the papers also explained how the NIH was allegedly providing funds for that research. He continued by noting that the paper's findings "explicitly match the definition of gain-of-function research." However, Fauci has already denied these claims, saying, "This paper was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function." Yet, the newly released emails show Fauci referring to the research by scientists at Wuhan University as "gain-of-function experiments", according to Daily Mail.
